A portal is a computer application that provides a single starting point for retrieving and aggregating content from multiple, divergent sources. The portal may be a Web site that is a major starting site for users when the users connect to the Web. Either alternatively or additionally, the portal may be a Web site that users tend to visit as an anchor site. Either way, the portal may provide a presentation layer of content aggregated from different sources and may provide links to many other Web sites.
The portal may offer a wide variety of resources, services, and links. Typical services offered by portal sites include providing a directory of Web sites, providing an ability to search for information, providing e-mail capabilities, providing a community forum, providing on-line shopping, and providing information such as news, weather, stock quotes, phone information and maps.
The services offered by a portal may be customized to a particular audience. Some portals offer services that are customized to a particular industry, occupation, or field. For example, a Web-based bank portal may enable customers to access their checking, savings, and investment accounts.
In addition, the portal may provide personalization and single sign-on. The EXCITE portal is an example of a portal that offers users the ability to personalize a Web site according to individual interests.
Portals can use portlets to enable direct interactive manipulation of applications from divergent sources through a single Web user interface. A portlet is a Web component, usually managed by a container, that processes requests and generates dynamic content. Portals can use the portlets as pluggable, user interface components to provide a presentation layer to information systems.
Portlets are reusable components and can provide access to Web-based content, applications, and other resources. Examples of portlets include an email portlet, a weather portlet, a discussion forums portlet, and a news portlet.
Two standard portal methodologies that support portlets are JAVA JSR168 from Sun Microsystems and OASIS Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP). JSR168 portlets run in the same execution environment as the portal server itself. In contrast, WSRP portlets run outside of the portal server execution environment. Thus, whereas the JSR168 portlets run on the same computer as the portal web server, the WSRP portlets run on a different computer than the portal web server. For both JSR168 and WSRP portlets, the portlets run independently of the portal, and independently of each other. Proprietary portal/portlet methodologies may also be implemented.
WSRP portlets deliver content to a portal along with presentation information so that their WSRP services appear and operate to portal users like local portlets (e.g. like JSR168 portlets). On the portal side, a single, service-independent adapter is sufficient to integrate any WSRP service. Portal administrators are not required to write interface code to adapt WSRP services for their portal. Thus, with WSRP, a portal can integrate content and applications without custom programming and without using a variety of different interfaces and protocols.
Many businesses have Web-based portals that are used by their customers. If a customer has a question or a problem regarding a product or a service included in the portal, he/she may call a customer support telephone number for the business. However, a customer support representative who fields the call may have visibility to only a subset of the products in the customer's portfolio. This may occur if the business segregates its customer support along product families or individual products. In general, customer support can be problematic if the business has separate operations and support teams for its various products.